This is another connection to the ideology found in “1984”. It is the concept that Winston happens upon while reading the manifesto of the Brotherhood; “…the key lies in the proles.” This is the response the Winston finds after reading the book, and it is an answer that he believes unequivocally. However, Winston also considers that there is a strong unlikeliness of the proles ever rebelling, (potentially due to the instilling of “doublethink”). The proles are distracted by the everyday struggle to survive; they can never be bothered or take the necessary time to organize.
Winston conveys the clear message to beware of the ‘eyes’ of the party, enforcing the slogan “big brother is watching you. Winston promotes this awareness towards the other rebels of the party and general people to overall spread his knowledge and hopefully influence revolt. While
Throughout the entirety of this passage from George Orwell’s, 1984, Winston Smith is portrayed as a rather paranoid person. While searching for quotes to support this claim, many are found and can be used for this argument. For example, in paragraph 5, sentence 2, it states how any sound that Winston makes is being picked up, recorded, watched, and monitored by the “thought police.” Winston is constantly looking behind his back, scrutinizing the “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” posters, and laying as low as he possibly can. Instead of just accepting the fact that the thought police are everywhere, all the time, as most of society seems to have, Winston is questioning the community in which he lives in.
This idea is demonstrated when Winston walks among the proles and thinks about them. During this period, Winston meets with an old man in a bar and talks with him about Oceania before the Revolution, during this time, he learns more about the proles and their activity. For example, he notices that bombs are only shot at proles, not party members, but the proles seem to be aware of when the rockets are coming, even several seconds before they hit (pg. 87). This may mean that they may have the knowledge to figure out patterns and may be more intelligent that made out to be by the party. Winston also says that “the hope lies in the proles” due to the fact that the large numbers of the proles would be required to be capable of overthrowing the Party (pg. 72).
He has hope in them, but in the end this hope is never proven, nor any other way the Party was defeated. Julia is the character who exhibits the most defiance against the Party. She goes against the Party by breaking the rule about sex outside of marriage, even just the act on it’s own. Winston ponders on the idea, going on in his thoughts on the idea, “He wondered vaguely how many others like her might be in the younger generation--not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog” (131). This act of rebellion is subtle and proves that there are those who will go against the Party, perhaps not outright fighting, but in silence.
Winston sees the gravity of the situation and is genuinely curious about the Party and concerned about its ways of controlling people’s minds and bodies. He wants to rebel in a big and effective way that would put an end to the party. He wants to create a coup-d’etat and overthrow the party once and for all. He also stands up for the common good and tries to see a bigger picture. On the other hand, Julia puts herself and occasionally Winston First.
If we take a look at what Winston’s does in the Party, his job is to keep the people ignorant about true facts and statistics in order to keep everyone happy. This allows the party to keep everyone ignorant about everything and make them always feel strong in the progress. If the people were to find out the true facts and their manipulation, they would rebel against the Party. So, the people’s ignorance is the Party’s strength. Through the use of War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength, the Party is able to distort people’s human nature and keep themselves in
It was not until O’Brien summoned Winston to Room 101, where he used the last string of hope Winston had—only able to function because of a vague feeling of trust—in order to finally and actually ostracize him. His initial “morbid self-isolation [comes] from shunning social contact due to anger toward the world,” (Diamond). When O’Brien speaks of essentially taking over the world through war and indoctrination as seen in the Ministry of Love, Winston simply refutes and expresses that alienation as such would eliminate the free will of mankind and is virtually impossible. The hope that Winston had for the Proles and the rest of humanity was obliterated time and time again with O’Brien’s torture. This repetitive destruction adds to the novels entirety as a desolate, dystopian novel.
He gives Winston the environment to speak freely, allowing the relationship between the two to strengthen into one where Winston looks up to O’Brien as a type of leader or mentor. “‘You will have heard rumors of the existence of the Brotherhood... We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation.’” (Orwell 175-176). O’Brien gives Winston all of the information that he has desired.
Demonstrating how the party’s ideals have caused Winston to automatically make the assumption that all proles are subhuman. In the text, Winston never actively challenges this presumption; consequently, displaying his unconscious superiority complex caused by the government's orthodoxical ideals. Correspondingly, the use of the third-person in the second quotation serves to distance Winston from the proles; further empathizing the class division between Winston and the proles, which distinguishes the likelihood of insurgency to
When I are being watched, I acted restricted. I am not allow to express my thought freely. Like me, Winston cannot express his thought freely because “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” (Orwell, 4). In 1984, if anyone was detected “opening a diary”, they “would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camps”(Orwell, 8).Winston cannot write in his diary because he is being watched by BIG BROTHER and it is considered as an act of rebellion.
They always conform by directing their contempt towards enemies of the Party and fear those conspiring against it. Through the threat of rebellion and sabotage, citizens are kept in fear and have their hate directed at the Party’s enemies and are manipulated to rely on it for protection. Winston, however, fears the Party and its total control on his life and on society. He secretly harbors dreams of a revolution and the destruction of the Party. His failure to be manipulated is later rectified through other tactics until he becomes a “perfect” member of society, relying on and loving the Party.
As mentioned in the text, “the Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals...”, Winston along with other members of the party were embedded with the idea that it’s conventional for the members of the party to treat the proles in a degrading manner similar to the ways in which they would treat animals. This idea is reiterated as Winston remembers the party slogan that states: ‘Proles and animals are free’ and compares the behaviors of the proles with words like ‘work’ and ‘breed’. These words and phrases signify that Party members simply view the proles as a mere source of entertainment and a place in which it is justified for the party members to further contaminate and sabotage for its already
During the story of 1984 Winston reveals himself as a heroic figure. His willingness to fight against the untouchable party forces him to risk his own life in many ways. Even Winston thinking poorly of the party was a very punishable crime. Even when he is being punished for his crimes he keeps proving himself a hero as he wonders and pushes to discover why the society is being run the way it is. He is also very stubborn to the thoughts of the party.
Winston also acknowledges the fact that the proles will remain ignorant to their power until they rebel but they will not rebel until they are aware of their power. This cyclic contradiction proves that the proles will never be able to overthrow the government. This ignorance of the people gives strength to the Party. The Ministry of Truth, where Winston works, has a big part in keeping the people ignorant. Winston’s job is to change the past.
